A quick trip to Finland
reveals Specialized’s secret
tire testing facility with
a name reminiscent of a
1980’s Scandinavian New
Wave band. Welcome to
Wheel Energy.

At the heart of this new focus on tires
was a seismic shift in Specialized’s
thinking. They no longer want to be
a bike company producing tires that
are just “good enough” as an economic
decision, capitalizing on their
massive brand awareness and global
distribution. The motivation is now
performance and a desire to make tires
that rival the very best the dedicated
tire manufacturers offer.

If there is one thing the Finnish
understand it’s traction. On asphalt,
dirt, gravel and ice that razor-thin
moment when rubber has given
all it can give and is a millisecond
from betraying you with a stomach
lurching lateral slide is a moment
the Finn’s seem to know on some
genetic level. The country of only
five million is racing mad. Their
population, equal to California’s
greater Los Angeles area, has
produced more Formula 1 and
Rally world champions than any
other country, 18 in total. An
understanding of the relationship
between rubber and road is a Finnish
birth right.

rolling resistance, puncture resistance,
and of course, traction. While these
tests would form the foundation of
their tire laboratory, another concept
became just as important—neutrality.
Wheel Energy will perform a complete
battery of tests on any tires and
pass along the results unaltered by
marketing or preconceived notions.
This small company in the frigid north
is the only facility in the world set up
to do this type of testing.

Once this new mandate was put in
action, Specialized’s tire department
doubled in size and the existing line of
tires was put through extensive testing
at Wheel Energy.

When Specialized bicycles took a hardlook at their line of tires a few yearsback, they had to admit they had lost astep. Their Mondo line of tires simplydidn’t match up with the best clinchersthen on the market. This was a toughfact to swallow for a company thatwas founded by Mike Sinyard in 1976on the back of high-end road tires.Determined to find their way backto the top, they knocked on WheelEnergy’s door. Just how far behindWhat they found was that their bestrace clincher created up to 25% morerolling resistance than the industryleader. What they found was a dual-radius concept that did nothing toincrease traction or promote handling.In short, Specialized needed to startfrom the ground up.

What makes this a dauntingproposition is the conflicting nature ofa tire itself. It needs to be supple andsticky, yet durable and light. It needsto roll easily but conform to the roadSo it came as no surprise that tiremanufacturers looking for that elusivecombination of low rolling resistance,good traction and high durabilityfound a company occupying a tinyportion of the Finnish tundra onehour north of Helsinki and 100k westof mother Russia. This company,Wheel Energy, is the brainchild ofPetri Hankiola, an engineer who wasinterested in answering a seeminglysimple but surprisingly diabolicalquestion: which tires are the best?

In 2003, working with two other
Finns, a physicist, Viejo Pulkkanen,
and a machinist, Marco Savolainen,
they began devising rigs to test the
critical areas of tire performance,